(FORTUNE Magazine) – ''Money has no odor,'' said Roman Emperor Vespasian after he levied a tax on public urinals. Jimmy Hoffa's money smelled like a sewer. The Napoleonic labor
leader who built the Teamsters union into a racketeering empire stashed millions of dollars in blocked-off sewer lines in the basement of his Detroit home. On one occasion Hoffa
ordered two associates to take $1 million fished out of the pipes to Washington, D.C. That is just one of the stories in Hoffa's Man (Prentice Hall Press, $17.95), by Joseph (Joe)
Franco, a 6-foot-4, 250-pound Sicilian-American who was a Hoffa strong-arm man, and Richard Hammer, a former New York Times reporter. Franco, who helped deliver the cash, says he does
not know who got the money or why. By his own account a thief, extortionist, leg breaker, and hired killer by the time he dropped out of the eighth grade, Franco learned early never
to ask questions. But he doesn't mind speculating. He thinks the cash was used to further Hoffa's war against the Kennedy brothers. Franco does clear up the mystery of Hoffa's 1975
disappearance from the parking lot of a Detroit area restaurant, if you can believe him. Rather than being kidnapped by rival union forces as law enforcement authorities have long
speculated, Franco says Hoffa was abducted by two federal agents. He thinks they drove Hoffa to a nearby airport, took off in a small plane, and pushed him out over one of the Great
Lakes. Franco says he did not tell federal investigators this bizarre, and unverifiable, story because they would not grant him immunity. Hoffa's body has never been found. You won't
find any labor-management tips here, but this is a good, hair- raising read. After all, someone who tells you that he prefers chains to baseball bats for resolving labor disputes is
obviously a straight-from-the- shoulder guy.